This is every “intuitive” interface ever in the history of mankind.
“Here Ug, look what I made.”
“What is it, Nug?”
“I call it a ‘Wheel’, Ug.”
“How do you use it?”
“Well this is the brilliant part, Ug, it’s intuitive.”
200 years later, humans begin to use the wheel.
Recently started using a Mac (with El Capitan) for the first time ever, a loaner while I look for a new laptop to stick Linux on.
I tried to set up a different colour scheme for the Terminal application, to discover it will not respect the RGB values you enter for the background. Instead, it applies what it thinks you really want, based on your foreground colour, its ideas about acceptable contrast (which are not those of this middle-aged and short-sighted user), and possibly the phase of the moon and sunspot activity.
Extensive Googling revealed that to get the actual values you want, you have to convert to HSV and enter those: for some reason, it doesn’t mess with them. Forum consensus is that this is an oversight rather than a feature, and will likely be ‘rectified’ at some point.
I sit corrected. Pre-ordering the Surface Studio. That looks like a nice piece of kit.
That’s sexy as heck. Really nice. Looking forward to learning more about it. Not cheap at $3k.
I at least get to spend “Other People’s Money” and call it a technology demonstration.
What are your preferred values for Foreground and Background, if you don’t mind me asking?
Not at all.
In this particular instance, I was trying to set up Solarized, so #002b36 for background and #839496 for foreground. I’m not the biggest fan of Solarized (I find the background a bit too bright and too turquoise, the foreground a bit too dark, and the red too fuzzy), but it’s acceptable, and I wanted something quickly. OS X Terminal then exacerbated the problem with the background by transforming it to something that would look wonderful on a brochure advertising yachting in the Greek islands, but was utterly useless as a canvas for monospaced grey text.
In general, I spend far too much time messing around with my terminal colour schemes. I tend to favour a dark grey but not quite black background (say #181818), possibly with a slight tint of cyan (but not as much as Solarized), and a medium to light grey for foreground (say #cccccc) – readable but clearly distinguishable from white (which I save for bold) on the one hand and from a darker but still legible grey for code comments and other secondary content on the other. (I went through a stint of using one of the X11 shades of Navajo White as foreground for a while, which was interesting, but probably not something I’d repeat.)
Like I say, way too much time farting around.
What about yourself?
Oh you probably are going to think me too twee for words, but it’s sort of a sepia. (brown ink on off-white paper)
Have you tried importing the Solarized palette into ~/Library/Colors?
I have not. I’m still finding my way round this thing.
Now that, oddly, is my preference for reading the web. There was a Firefox plugin, which I can no longer find and the name of which I can’t remember, that transformed web pages into that colour scheme (as well as doing other legibility-enhancing things to the type face and size, margins, line length and leading).
Leaked chassis pictures from a few months ago show 4 identical rectangular holes, likely USB-C. That’s it, no other ports. AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!
The Optimus Prime has always been my wet dream, but Lebedev’s design studio never really managed to transform into a reliable hardware vendor. To be fair, the technology wasn’t there - every key was massive, effectively a mini-screen in itself, which is why the cost was what it was.
Today, a totally transparent keyboard with icons somehow projected on each key, or with a full screen underneath “matching” keys, IMHO would work great. The problem of doing it with a touchscreen, like Apple seems to be doing (or Lenovo did with the Yoga), is that tactile feedback is completely lost. We need real keys.
Are you not using iTerm2 ? That’s what most People Who Stare At Terminals On Mac do, afaik (or at least that’s what I do). Afaik iTerm2 respects your color wishes as well as your musical tastes.
Not on the Mac. Cmd-shift-3/4 (+alt, if you need it into the clipboard rather than a file) have been doing the job for ages.
Excuse me. It’s not an “alt” key. it’s an option key.
I know, but on my MBP it says “alt” and then has a funny tree-branch icon, son, so imma call it “alt” 
Oh, you must have one of those “export grade” laptops.
Quite. And tomorrow I’ll probably get the privilege to order a new one that will be 20% more expensive than this one, because I happen to share an island with a restless mob. I think the expectation is that I should commandeer a ship and buccaneer my way to the Caribbeans, in order to intercept precious shipments of such laptops originally destined to the shores of treacherous Germany. For the glory of England, or something. Sigh.
No I’m not. Thanks for the tip.
I am but a poor and ignorant exile in the Realm of OS X, and hope one day to return to the Promised Land.
That’s one awkward workaround, yes.
Really, though, this’ll come down to remapping the ` key with some third party solution like Karabiner ( https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/ ) for people who actually need to do work on their ‘pro’ MacBooks.
It doesn’t work on Sierra yet, but I’m confident they’ll get it there.
You find it awkward? I’m trying to train myself to use it because I find it easier (when I remember) to hit caps lock (remapped to ctrl) at the far end of the home row with one hand and [ (just above the home row) at the other, rather than reaching all the way to the top left and frequently hitting backtick or F1 by mistake.
Different strokes, I guess.
